Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
—Mao Zedong, 1938Quotes
Why has the government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice without constraint.
—Alexander Hamilton, 1787You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.
—Henrik Ibsen, 1882The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
—H.L. Mencken, 1921You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.
—Mario Cuomo, 1985People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.
—Robert Byrd, 2005The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.
—Che Guevara, 1968I work for a government I despise for ends I think criminal.
—John Maynard Keynes, 1917Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.
—Immanuel Kant, 1784The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.
—Dean Acheson, 1970Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.
—Laozi, c. 500 BCA riot is at bottom the language of the unheard.
—Martin Luther King Jr., c. 1967It is impossible to tell which of the two dispositions we find in men is more harmful in a republic, that which seeks to maintain an established position or that which has none but seeks to acquire it.
—Niccolò Machiavelli, c. 1515